Coyote Blog

Every once in a while I post something off the cuff and find retroactively that I have tapped into a rich source of blogging material.  Such is the case with my post a couple of days ago about technocrats on the left regretting loss of control of the statist institutions they created.  In that article I cited examples of the left freaking out over a conservative-controlled FDA halting over-the-counter approval of the Plan B morning after pill and the injection of certain conservative dogmas (e.g. intelligent design) into public schools.  The moral was that the left is lamenting the loss of control, when they should be reevaluating the construction of the regulatory state in the first place.

David Bernstein at Volokh brings us another example with the Solomon Amendment, the legislation that requires universities that accept public funds to allow military recruiters on campus.  Folks on the left hate this act, many because they oppose the military at all junctures while others more narrowly oppose recruiting as a protest against the Clinton-era "don't ask, don't tell" policy law brainchild.  Eskridge and Polsby debate the pros and cons at the ACS Blog.  I tend to be sympathetic to the private universities, who rightly don't feel like acceptance of federal money or research grants should negate their control of their institution.

But my point is not the merits of the Solomon Amendment, but to point out the irony, very parallel with the FDA and public schools examples previously:  The Solomon Amendment is built sturdily on the precedent of Federal Title IX legislation, legislation that is a part of the bedrock of leftish politics in America.  Title IX first established the principal that the Federal government could legally override the policy-making and decision-making at private universities if they accepted any federal cash.  It was the left that fought for and celebrated this principal.  The left ruthlessly defended the state's right to meddle in private universities in substantial ways, and passed legislation to shore Title IX up when the Supreme Court weakened state control (from the Bernstein post):

The Court's attempt to preserve some institutional autonomy for universities
from anti-discrimination laws caused uproar among liberal anti-discrimination
activists. They persuaded Congress to pass the "Civil Rights Restoration Act."
This law ensured that if a university receives any federal funds at all,
including tuition payments from students who receive federal aid, as in Grove
City's case, all educational programs at that university are subject to Title
IX.

The Solomon Amendment is modeled after the Civil Rights Restoration Act's
interpretation of Title IX.

In fact, in the linked articles, Solomon is being attacked by the left precisely because it does not allow universities the freedom to set their own anti-discrimination policy (in this case, banning recruiters judged discriminatory to gays), when the whole issue of Title IX was precisely to override a university's chosen anti-discrimination policy (or lack thereof).  So again we have the case of the left building an government mechanism to control private decision-making, and then crying foul when their political enemies take control of the machinery.

In my naive youth, I would have assumed that this contradiction would quickly be recognized.  However, the left (and the right too, but that is for another post) has been able for years to maintain the cognitive dissonance necessary to support the FDA's meddling in every single decision about what medical procedures and compounds a person can have access to while at the same time arguing that abortion is untouchable by government and that a woman should make decisions for her own body.  In this case, it will be interesting to see if the left is able to simultaneously decry state control of discrimination policies at private universities in Solomon while continuing to support state control of private university discrimination policies as essential in Title IX.

Correction: You learn something every day.  I called don't-ask-don't-tell a "policy, as I had assumed that it was merely an internal military policy.  Apparently it is a law.

I am a big supporter of the work FIRE does to support openness and individual rights in universities.  Today, FIRE turns its attention on Phoenix's own Arizona State University:

State-sponsored racial segregation has found a home at Arizona State University
(ASU).  ASU's ironically named 'Rainbow Sections' of English 101 and 102 have
been advertised on flyers and on the university's website as being open to
'Native Americans only.'

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has written to the
university to demand that the classes be opened to all students. Shockingly,
this marks the second time in less than four years that FIRE has been forced to
protest a racially segregated course at ASU.

It is appalling that ASU would resurrect segregated classes five decades
after Brown v. Board of Education," stated David French, president of
FIRE.  "The idea that a class can be 'separate but equal' was discredited long
ago.

The 'Rainbow Sections' of English 101 and 102, ASU's freshman composition
courses, were advertised as "restricted to Native Americans only" on the faculty
webpage of Professor G. Lynn Nelson, the course instructor.  A flyer
addressed to 'Native American Students' states that they 'are invited to enroll
in special Native American sections of ENG 101 and 102.'  It also discusses some
of the differences between the special sections and the 'standard First Year
Composition classes,' making it clear that the special sections offer a
different educational experience.

Anyone heard of Brown vs. Board of Education here?  I wouldn't have a particular problem with private groups offering such education with these restrictions, after all I have said many times that the right of free association implies a right not to associate with whoever you want.  But public institutions have different obligations in this regard.  Its actually not that hard to deal with, and even ASU knows what the solution is:

FIRE last wrote
to ASU in April 2002 to protest a segregated Navajo history class that
limited enrollment to Native American students. At that time, ASU simply dropped
the racial restriction in response to FIRE's letter.

Its OK to have different versions of the same coursework, and probably OK to advertise one version as specially targeted at a particular group, as long as you let individual students make the final decision on which of the University-sanctioned versions are right for them.

Several times on this blog I have found myself defending "hate speech".  Not because I agreed with it, but because I am deeply concerned that the effort to label certain speech "hate speech" is part of a general campaign to limit first amendment rights.  If speech limiters are successful in establishing the principal that certain speech is so bad that it is not protected by the first amendment, then we are suddenly at the mercy of whoever is in charge of defining "bad" for our speech rights.  Universities, ironically at the forefront of the "free speech" movement of the 60's, have been at the forefront of "hostile environment" limitations on speech in this decade.

There are many such examples.  The group FIRE, which fights speech limitations on campus, has a blog and a university rating system that is a great resource.  One recent example from their files is of Mr. J. Daniel at William Patterson University in New Jersey.  A couple of facts first, and then a fantastic letter in his defense from Rutgers professor Norman Levitt.  The background:

Mr. Daniel was one addressee of a mass mailing from Prof. Scala publicizing a
film she was about to show, a documentary that presented a positive view of
lesbian relationships. Mr. Daniel, who espouses religious doctrines deploring
homosexuality, responded with a request not to be sent similar notices in the
future, along with a few brief sentences summarizing his general views. It is
notable that he did not threaten Prof. Scala directly or by implication, nor did
he deny her right to show the film. He did not publicize the exchange. He did
not use the incident to launch a campaign of ridicule or vilification against
homosexuals or anyone else. He merely counterposed his ideas to those she was
presumably promoting, in a purely private way and in response to an unsolicited
message directed to him.

What Prof. Scala actually did was engage her university president in a joint effort to censor and punish Mr. Daniel.  I have read Mr. Daniel's comments, which I don't happen to agree with.  However, the response he got to his very reasonable actions is very scary.  Prof. Levitt describes the rest:

Prof. Scala, however, seems to regard disagreement with her position as a
punishable offense. In this respect, she has embraced peculiar dogmas that have
become all too prevalent on campuses throughout the nation. These hold that
there are certain groups who, by reason of a presumed history of oppression, are
to be safeguarded from opinions that they find distressing or uncomfortable. The
rights of others to hold, or at least to express, such dissonant views are
supposedly nullified by the new-minted "right" of the protected groups to be
shielded from discomfort and distress. Both the ethic of free speech and the
constitutional guarantees that bolster it are supposedly trumped by the duty to
shield the tender sensibilities of the officially recognized victim class. If,
by chance, someone utters a sentence or two, even in the context of private
discussion, that affronts these sensibilities, terms like "harassment" and
"hostile environment" are immediately trotted out to justify retribution against
the offending speaker. In short, the assumption is that colleges and
universities have both the right and the positive duty to require students,
faculty, and employees to uphold official doctrine on these matters, if only by
silencing themselves if they happen to disagree.

Wow, I wish I could write like that.  There is much more, all on point and very well written here.

The NJ Attorney General has chimed in and said... wait for it ... that Ms. Scala is entirely in the right and that Mr. Daniel is probably guilty of harassment and discrimination under NJ law as well for expressing his opinions.

By the way, if you think that Professor Levitt was exaggerating for saying that speech is condemned merely if it hurts the feelings of someone in a protected group, here is a very typical quote from a college speech code (I just grabbed the first one I found on the FIRE site):

The Albertson College
Student Handbook's harassment policy states that "[a]ny comments or conduct
relating to a person's race, gender, religion, disability, age or ethnic
background that fail to respect the dignity and feelings of the individual are
unacceptable." The Handbook also provides that "[a]ll inappropriate behaviors
may not be specifically covered in the misconduct definitions, and students will
be held accountable for behaviors considered inconsistent with the standards and
expectations described in this handbook."

Just to prove this is not an aberration, here is another:

The Rhodes College Policy on Discrimination and Harassment states
that "[f]reedom of expression does not include the right to intentionally and
maliciously aggravate, intimidate, ridicule or humiliate another person." Now,
we at FIRE know that all too many university administrators believe this
statement to be true; this is apparent from the way speech codes are enforced on
campuses across the country. However, few colleges and universities are bold
enough to make an explicit statement about free expression that directly
contradicts U.S. Supreme Court precedent. The administrators of Rhodes College
need to read the Supreme Court's decision in , in which the Court upheld
Hustler's right to publish a parody suggesting that Jerry Falwell's first sexual
experience was a drunken tryst in an outhouse with his own mother. Parody and
satire"”which often intentionally and maliciously ridicule and humiliate their
targets"”enjoy the strongest constitutional protection.

Update:  By the way, here is the whole text of the email in question.  Don't agree with him, but I have a hard time seeing anyone threatened and certainly can't fathom kicking the guy out of school and threatening him with prosecution for it.  More evidence that the promotors of diversity don't actually want diversity.

Campus liberals rightly get a lot of heat for their attacks on free speech and expression at universities via speech codes and the like.  I have piled on a number of times.  However, the impulse restrict speech you don't agree with is not limited to liberals (though it may be more prevalent due to leftist control of most campuses).  Take this story via Volokh:

Vince Finaldi points me to the affidavit justifying the arrest of a student for asking a rude question at an Ann Coulter speech.  If the facts in the affidavit are accurate, then it looks like the student has an excellent First Amendment defense.

Basically, the student asked Ms. Coulter her opinion of a married man and woman engaging in sodomy.  Granted that he asked the question in a fairly profane manner, but he seems to have followed the Q&A rules by getting up, asking his question, and quietly waiting for the reply from his seat.  So why are the police hauling him away?

I could easily have chosen nearly any university in the country as the example for this post, but I will choose my alma mater Princeton. 

Like many universities, Princeton has a speech code.  Like many universities, Princeton's speech code is an affront to the First Amendment and an open license to selectively apply administrative punishments based on political beliefs.

The Princeton speech code says, in part:

Abusive or harassing behavior, verbal or physical, which demeans, intimidates, threatens, or injures another because of his or her personal characteristics or beliefs, is subject to University disciplinary sanctions...

And further defines sexual harassment as:

verbal or physical conduct [that] has the effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual's work, academic performance, or living conditions by creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive environment.

This is the worst kind of arbitrary legislation.  In no part of the guidelines are any of these terms defined.  In fact, both as written and as practiced, the definition of these terms is left entirely up to the victim, with outrageous consequences.  Basically we have gotten to the point where hurting someones feelings, or even disagreeing with them, is a crime. 

This would be bad enough if enforced even-handedly, but in practice, speech codes become a tool of the University faculty and administration to squelch speech they don't agree with.  One of my pet peeves is the term "hate speech", which is used frequently in political diatribes by both the left and the right.  While this term may have at one point had some utility in narrowly describing the most extreme racism, today in its common usage it has come to mean "speech I don't agree with".  In a similar manner, campus speech codes are effectively enforced as banning speech that the ruling orthodoxy of the university does not agree with.  If a gay rights activist and a conservative Christian get into an
argument on campus and use similar invective against each other, you
can bet only one is probably going to get sanctioned.  And, given the typical politics of universities today, you can guess what speech is protected and what is sanctioned. 

Here is my rule of thumb:  unless speech meets the (narrow) definition of libel, no legally or
administratively actionable harm can be claimed as a result of it.  Or, as we were taught as kids, sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me.  In the adult world, this should translate to:  Physical assaults are actionable, verbal assaults are not. 

The Princeton Tory has a nice article on these policies, as well as the really bad idea to extend this to a "social honor code".  And, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is the leading defender of free speech on campus and has a great web site.

Postscript:  Speech limitations are a very slippery slope.  So much so that I have never encountered speech or expression by adults aimed at other adults that I would limit.  Nazis, communists, birchers, pornographers, racists, revolutionaries, militia, muslims, atheists:  Have at it.  Even Congressmen.  And even this.

Update:  One other thought.  I have never understood why so many people think that the right approach to people who have stupid, awful ideas is to keep them from being heard.  This applies not only to speech codes but the increasingly frequent attempts to ban speakers from campus or, if that is unsuccessful, drown their speech out with chants and interruptions.  Why?  I have always thought that Sunlight is the Best Disinfectant not just for government proceedings but for bad ideas as well.  Let them be heard and ridiculed.  After all, Hitler "called his shots" more than a decade before he began his horrible reign.  The world would have been better off if he had been listened to carefully in those early years.

I have tried to resist the temptation to blog much on the whole Ward Churchill situation.  In part this is because it has been kicked around so thoroughly in other venues, and in part because I just knew I would get emails purposefully misunderstanding my point.  I have instead tried to focus some positive attention on emerging examples of scholarship where none existed before.  That said, I would like to try to add my own postscript on the whole Churchill fiasco.

First, while he has made some truly egregious statements that point to his moral bankruptcy,such as those he made about the 9/11 attacks and victims, I don't think that UC has grounds to fire him for these comments, at least based on the accepted rules and purpose of tenure.  One of the reasons for tenure is to give academics the freedom to pursue scholarship in any direction, without threat of political retribution.

However, Churchill should be fired for his complete lack of quality scholarship or principled academic research.  Churchill, through his poor scholarship, plagiarism, and outright fabrications have helped to set back historic studies about Native Americans and their tragic interaction with Western Civilization.  Churchill has become the poster boy for one of the leading problems in academia today, that is the ability of certain individuals to substitute vocal leftist politics and minority status for intellectual rigor and true scholarship in getting tenure at major universities.   A non-protected group white male of moderate politics with the same body of academic work as Churchill couldn't get a job teaching at any self-respecting university, but put the same work under the banner of radical leftist native American, and suddenly he has tenure at the University of Colorado.

Anyway, Victor David Hanson has a great piece in NRO summarizing why Ward Churchill represents what is wrong in academia today.

Many universities over the last several decades have created race and gender studies programs.  One of the problems with many of these programs has been the appalling quality of scholarship.  The recent broohaha around Ward Churchill at Colorado is but one example -- there are many others.  For example, look how Cal-State Long Beach chose the head of their Black Studies Department:

On September 17, 1971, Karenga was sentenced to one to ten years in prison on counts of felonious assault and false imprisonment. The charges stemmed from a May 9, 1970 incident in which Karenga and two others tortured two women who Karenga believed had tried to kill him by placing "crystals" in his food and water.
       

A year later the Los Angeles Times described the events: "Deborah Jones, who once was given the title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis' mouth and placed against Miss Davis' face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vice. Karenga, head of US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said."       

The shooting at UCLA caused Karenga to become deeply paranoid and spurred his bizarre behavior. At his trial, the question of Karenga's sanity arose. The psychiatrist's report stated, "This man now represents a picture which can be considered both paranoid and schizophrenic with hallucinations and elusions, inappropriate affect, disorganization, and impaired contact with the environment." The psychiatrist observed that Karenga talked to his blanket and imaginary persons and believed that he had been attacked by dive-bombers.

Eight years later California State University at Long Beach made Karenga the head of its Black Studies Department.

Or, check out the scholarly discussions around choosing the head of Black Studies at UCLA:

In 1965 Karenga founded the United Slaves Organization (US), a group that would rival the Black Panthers on the UCLA campus. The US was more radical than the Panthers, setting off quarrels between the two.
       

The biggest dispute between the US and the Panthers centered around the leadership of the new Afro-American Studies department at UCLA; both groups backed a different candidate. On January 17, 1969, 150 students gathered to discuss the situation. Panthers John Jerome Huggins and Alprentice Carter used the meeting to verbally attack Karenga, much to the dismay of his followers. Two US members, George and Larry Stiner, confronted Huggins and Carter in a hallway after the meeting and shot and killed them.

Universities all raced to create new race and gender-based studies departments, and tenured many  based on their strong opinions and the positive response they would get out of the relevant community, rather than normal academic guidelines.

Anyway, I have, as often happens, gotten away from the point of my post.   The NY Times has a good article on Roland Fryer, who appears to be the leading edge of a new generation set on bringing real scholarship and fact-based analysis to these programs.  (hat tip:  marginal revolution)  I don't necessarily agree with him, for example on paying cash for good grades in school, but I am happy to see his dedication to real analysis and challenging conventional wisdom.

For years, women at Harvard argued there needed to be more women on the faculty to support "diversity".  I have always thought that diversity meant that you had a lot of difference - in this case different kinds of people with different skills.  Now, Larry Summers is getting attacked by the female faculty for implying that women are, uhh, perhaps different from men.  Women are insisting that there is no justification for even studying the question of whether women are different than men.  They maintain that women are the same, no argument allowed.  But if they are the same, how is hiring more women contributing to diversity?

My guess is that the comeback of those involved is that women don't have a genetic difference from men, but they have a difference in perspective (political, philosophical, etc).  There are two obvious problems with this:

• If what universities are really trying to achieve is a diversity of background, perspective, and political/philosophical viewpoints then why don't they hire for and measure diversity based on background, perspective, and political/philosophical viewpoints, rather than the imperfect proxy of black/white, man/woman, etc.
• And, If what universities are really trying to achieve is a diversity of
  background, perspective, and political/philosophical viewpoints -- they are doing a really crappy job, because universities are pretty dang homogeneous, at least in political viewpoint as compared to the population.

By the way, I was initially negative to Summer's comments myself here.  I still support my criticism that as a leader of a leading, in fact uniquely influential, educational institution, he has an obligation to his institution to be careful what he says.  A CEO today who speaks his mind on political issues is not only ill-advised, but may actually be violating his/her fiduciary responsibility by bringing public censure on the company's shareholders.

However, that said, the degree of hysteria over Summer's comments is mind-boggling, especially when you read what he actually said in context rather than just accept the media summary (basically, he did not say that men were better at math on average than women, he said that men MAY have a higher standard deviation in their skills, leading to a disproportionate number of men being both dolts and geniuses at math and science).  To some extent, the women driving this hysteria actually seem to be publicly reinforcing stereotypes of women being delicate (some silly woman actually said she almost fainted at Summer's remarks)  overly emotional (given their hysterical reaction) and, ironically enough, non-scientific (given the fact that no one has thought to take on Summers scientific query with facts rather than political intimidation).

In my experience, a confident mature woman can make the average man feel bumbling and childish, and have an ability to rise above the fray to bring sanity to a confused situation.  Why can't the grown-ups among the female gender be heard in such arguments? Never mind, the first sentence answers the second.  Besides, I think most confident intelligent women are giving up on woman's organizations anyway.

I am all for restructuring the whole social security system, but, as I have written before, we cannot let the government invest social security funds in private equities.  The potential for manipulation and creeping socialism are astronomical.  Its easy to picture fights over whether the social security funds should be invested in tobacco makers, gun makers, hospitals that conduct abortions, Domino's Pizza (that donates funds to oppose abortion), Haliburton, etc. etc. 

I have always used government-funding of universities as an example -- the government uses the leverage of this funding (and the threat of its withdrawal) to force all kinds of regulations on universities.  Today, we have a good case example that is even more directly applicable. 

Over the past several years, Calpers (the California state workers retirement fund) has been a great example of how government control of equity investments can be a disaster.  In the case of Calpers, their huge pension investments automatically make them one of the largest investors in each company in their portfolio.  Calpers has used that power wisely at times, promoting improvements in corporate governance, but has also used it astronomically poorly. 

Under Sean Harrigan, Calpers portfolio has been unbelievably politicized, up to and including having the portfolio use its ownership in several grocery chains to support striking members of the grocery union run by... Sean Harrigan.  Professor Bainbridge has a couple of good roundups here and here.

If we are change how social security funds are invested, let individuals make their own investment choices.